Clouds above Hills

A sketch by Frederic Edwin Church, the preeminent American landscape painter of the mid-nineteenth century. Church's compositional studies—rapid notational drawings executed in pen and ink—reveal his working method as he refined atmospheric effects and topographical relationships. This study captures his characteristic attention to cloud formations and distant mountain ranges, elements that define his monumental canvases. Church's drawings demonstrate the technical foundation underlying his grand exhibitions, which attracted thousands of viewers and established landscape painting as America's dominant artistic genre during the Civil War era and beyond.